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Orthodox Union TorahThu, 02 Jan 2020 16:00:00 +0000en-UShourly1Orthodox UnionParshat Vaetchanan: The Commandment to Rememberhttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-veetchanan-the-commandment-to-remember/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-veetchanan-the-commandment-to-remember/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 16:01:55 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25767Ari Ziegler, JLIC alum and IFS staff member, tells us about Moshe’s choice of words and reveals why the task of remembering that the mitzvot were passed down on Har Sinai is more important than the task of following the mitzvot themselves.
]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-veetchanan-the-commandment-to-remember/feed/0Vaetchanan 5775https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/vaetchanan-5775/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/vaetchanan-5775/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 22:50:06 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25763https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/vaetchanan-5775/feed/0The Right and the Goodhttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/the-right-and-the-good/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/the-right-and-the-good/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 20:24:24 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25753Buried among the epic passages in Va-etchanan – among them the Shema and the Ten Commandments – is a brief passage with large implications for the moral life in Judaism. Here it is together with the preceding verse:

You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and His testimonies and His statutes, which He has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. (Deut. 6: 17-18)

The difficulty is obvious. The preceding verse makes reference to commandments, testimonies and statutes. This, on the face of it, is the whole of Judaism as far as conduct is concerned. What then is meant by the phrase “the right and the good” that is not already included within the previous verse?

Rashi says, it refers to “compromise (that is, not strictly insisting on your rights) and action within or beyond the letter of the law (lifnim mi-shurat ha-din).” The law, as it were, lays down a minimum threshold: this we must do. But the moral life aspires to more than simply doing what we must.[1] The people who most impress us with their goodness and rightness are not merely people who keep the law. The saints and heroes of the moral life go beyond. They do more than they are commanded. They go the extra mile. That according to Rashi is what the Torah means by “the right and the good.”

Ramban, while citing Rashi and agreeing with him, goes on to say something slightly different:

At first Moses said that you are to keep His statutes and his testimonies which He commanded you, and now he is stating that even where He has not commanded you, give thought as well to do what is good and right in his eyes, for He loves the good and the right.

Now this is a great principle, for it is impossible to mention in the Torah all aspects of man’s conduct with his neighbours and friends, all his various transactions and the ordinances of all societies and countries. But since He mentioned many of them, such as, “You shall not go around as a talebearer,” “You shall not take vengeance nor bear a grudge,” “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor,” “You shall not curse the deaf,” “You shall rise before the hoary head,” and the like, He went on to state in a general way that in all matters one should do what is good and right, including even compromise and going beyond the strict requirement of the law … Thus one should behave in every sphere of activity, until he is worthy of being called “good and upright.”

Ramban is going beyond Rashi’s point, that the right and the good refer to a higher standard than the law strictly requires. It seems as if Ramban is telling us that there are aspects of the moral life that are not caught by the concept of law at all. That is what he means by saying “It is impossible to mention in the Torah all aspects of man’s conduct with his neighbours and friends.”

Law is about universals, principles that apply in all places and times. Don’t murder. Don’t rob. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Yet there are important features of the moral life that are not universal at all. They have to do with specific circumstances and the way we respond to them. What is it to be a good husband or wife, a good parent, a good teacher, a good friend? What is it to be a great leader, or follower, or member of a team? When is it right to praise, and when is it appropriate to say, “You could have done better”? There are aspects of the moral life that cannot be reduced to rules of conduct, because what matters is not only what we do, but the way in which we do it: with humility or gentleness or sensitivity or tact.

Morality is about persons, and no two persons are alike. When Moses asked God to appoint a successor, he began his request with the words, “Lord, God of the spirits of all flesh.”[2] On this the rabbis commented: what Moses was saying was that because each person is different, he asked God to appoint a leader who would relate to each individual as an individual, knowing that what is helpful to one person may be harmful to another.[3] This ability to judge the right response to the right person at the right time is a feature not only of leadership, but of human goodness in general.

Rashi begins his commentary to Bereishit with the question: If the Torah is a book of law, why does it not start with the first law given to the people of Israel as a whole, which does not appear until Exodus 12? Why does it include the narratives about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the patriarchs and matriarchs and their children? Rashi gives an answer that has nothing to do with morality – he says it has to do with the Jewish people’s right to their land. But the Netziv (R. Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin) writes that the stories of Genesis are there to teach us how the patriarchs were upright in their dealings, even with people who were strangers and idolaters. That, he says, is why Genesis is called by the sages “the book of the upright.”[4]

Morality is not just a set of rules, even a code as elaborate as the 613 commands and their rabbinic extensions. It is also about the way we respond to people as individuals. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is at least in part about what went wrong in their relationship when the man referred to his wife as Ishah, ‘woman,’ a generic description, a type. Only when he gave her a proper name, Chavah, Eve, did he relate to her as an individual in her individuality, and only then did God “make them garments of skin and clothed them.”

This too is the difference between the God of Aristotle and the God of Abraham. Aristotle thought that God knew only universals not particulars. This is the God of science, of the Enlightenment, of Spinoza. The God of Abraham is the God who relates to us in our singularity, in what makes us different from others as well as what makes us the same.

This ultimately is the difference between the two great principles of Judaic ethics: justice and love. Justice is universal. It treats all people alike, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, making no distinctions on the basis of colour or class. But love is particular. A parent loves his or her children for what makes them each unique. The moral life is a combination of both. That is why it cannot be reduced solely to universal laws. That is what the Torah means when it speaks of “the right and the good” over and above the commandments, statutes and testimonies.

A good teacher knows what to say to a weak student who, through great effort, has done better than expected, and to a gifted student who has come top of the class but is still performing below his or her potential. A good employer knows when to praise and when to challenge. We all need to know when to insist on justice and when to exercise forgiveness. The people who have had a decisive influence on our lives are almost always those we feel understood us in our singularity. We were not, for them, a mere face in the crowd. That is why, though morality involves universal rules and cannot exist without them, it also involves interactions that cannot be reduced to rules.

Rabbi Israel of Rizhin once asked a student how many sections there were in the Shulchan Arukh. The student replied, “Four.” “What,” asked the Rizhiner, “do you know about the fifth section?” “But there is no fifth section,” said the student. “There is,” said the Rizhiner. “It says: always treat a person like a mensch.”

The fifth section of the code of law is the conduct that cannot be reduced to law. That is what it takes to do the right and the good.

If you did, and I think we all pray this way at moments of urgency, you violated an anonymous piece of wisdom:

“Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it.”

I have not been able to determine who said that. But I know clearly what he meant. In my own life, I have had more than one occasion to look back at answered prayers, which achieved what turned out to be very trivial objectives. And I have certainly been disappointed in prayer, only to learn that in the long run, I was much better off without the benefits of whatever I prayed for so earnestly.

We think we know what is good for us, we think we know what we need, but we really don’t. Often, we are much the better for having certain prayers rebuffed, and we frequently discover that the things we thought were important are not important at all.

In the Torah portion that we read in the synagogue this week, Parshat Va’etchanan, Moses confides to us how he powerfully beseeched the Almighty, begging Him to reverse His decision to frustrate Moses’ greatest dream, that he be permitted to enter the Promised Land. Moses uses a synonym for prayer, chanan, which connotes imploring, pleading for the undeserved favor, matnat chinam.

But Moses is denied his dream. His petition is torn up in his face. His is the archetypal unanswered prayer.

Joel Cohen, in his book Moses, a Memoir, puts these poignant words in the mouth of Moses:

“I lowered my knees and begged Him once again. I could muster no tears this time… I needed badly to reach and walk about the land He promised to Abraham for us, so long ago… My work is incomplete. My prophecy has achieved no reality for me in my lifetime… There will be no future for me. My staff, the instrumentality of miracles against His enemies, is powerless against His will.”

Beautifully put, by this author of a book I recommend to you all.

What are we to learn from the story of the unanswered prayer of the humblest, but greatest, of men? Many things, in my opinion.

We learn that the gates of prayer are not always open. In the words of the Midrash, they are sometimes open but sometimes closed. And we are not to rely upon them exclusively. Rather, we are to do our own part to achieve our objectives in mundane ways.

Judaism insists upon a balance between faith in the divine and the exercise of practical human effort. It acknowledges that while there must be bitachon, trust in the Lord, there must also be hishtadlut, old-fashioned hard work on our part. As the rabbis have it, never rely upon miracles.

We can never allow prayer to become a substitute for our doing all we can do. We must not simply expect the Almighty to achieve Jewish sovereignty for us, but must do our parts politically and militarily. We cannot expect manna from heaven, but must earn our livelihoods by dint of the sweat of our brow. And when we are ill, yes, we must pray, but we must also diligently seek out competent medical assistance.

There are other lessons, to be sure, to be learned from the unanswered prayer of Moses. His grave remains a secret, so that it not become a shrine and that he not be idolized or heaven forbid, deified. For another important lesson about prayer from the Jewish perspective, is that we pray to the One Above only, and not to saints and holy men, be they alive or be they dead. Cemeteries are not synagogues.

By not granting Moses his request, the Master of the Universe was in effect telling him that he did all that he could, and that no more is expected of him. Humans are expected to do all they can, and not necessarily to accomplish everything.

“It is not necessary for you to complete the task, but neither are you exempt from doing all that you can.”

Moses is being told, “You did all you could, even if you did not achieve all of your personal ambitions.” No human is complete, no man is perfect.

And then there is a final lesson, one that we learn from the very fact that Moses persisted in his prayer, although he knew well that his request would be spurned. He modeled the importance of hope, even in the face of impossible odds.

Jewish history contains a long list of Moses-like figures, whose vision it was to enter the Holy Land. They include men like the Gaon Elijah of Vilna, who longed to spend the last years of his life in Eretz Yisrael. And closer to our time, the great sage Yisrael Meir Kagan, the Chofetz Chaim, prayed and carefully planned to live out his life in Israel.

Ironically, they, like Moses, had their dreams frustrated by the Hand of Providence. Like Moses, they were ready to try almost anything to realize their ambitions. And like Moses, who was told that he would not enter the land but his disciple Joshua would, various leaders of Jewish history, however reluctantly, took comfort in the fact that their disciples realized their dream in their stead.

This is possibly the most important lesson of all. When our prayers go unanswered for ourselves, they may yet be answered for our children and grandchildren.

Unanswered prayers are mysteriously answered, in inscrutable and unpredictable ways.

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-weinreb-on-parsha/parshat-vaetchananshabbat-nachamu-answering-unanswered-prayers/feed/0Torah Tidbits Audio for Chazon 5775https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/torah-tidbits/torah-tidbits-audio-for-chazon-5775/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/torah-tidbits/torah-tidbits-audio-for-chazon-5775/#commentsTue, 28 Jul 2015 21:55:31 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25745Tish’a b’Av is coming. D’varim is the perfect sedra to be linked with it.
The story is not just from a long time ago… but it is sadly alive and well today.
]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/torah-tidbits/torah-tidbits-audio-for-chazon-5775/feed/0The Cruciblehttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/the-crucible/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/the-crucible/#commentsTue, 28 Jul 2015 18:12:45 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25742The great tragedy of Moshe’s life was the fact that he did not complete his mission; he would not bring the people to the Promised Land. In fact, we might say that this is actually two tragedies: On a personal level, it is almost inconceivable that Moshe, our greatest leader and teacher, our staunchest defender and most dedicated shepherd, would not see the Land of Israel up close, not be forgiven and allowed to reap the rewards of his years of unflinching dedication. On the other hand, Moshe’s fate symbolizes a national tragedy: The entire generation that had experienced the wonders of the Exodus, the splitting of the sea, the Revelation at Mount Sinai and so much more, would also perish in the desert. The land will be inherited and enjoyed by their children.

Moshe begs to see the land. God understands precisely what it is that Moshe prays for, and although He commands Moshe to desist from further entreaties, God does, in fact, fulfill Moshe’s prayer in a very literal sense. Moshe is allowed to climb to a mountaintop vantage point and “see the land,” – but only from afar.

As Moshe continues his speech to the young generation who will soon go where he is not permitted to tread, it becomes painfully obvious to them that Moshe will not be joining them for the final leg of the journey. He takes this last opportunity to warn them about the consequences of idolatry, and pleads with them to keep the commandments in order to insure that the inheritance they are about to receive not be forfeited.

We may wonder how Moshe’s final words were received by this young, eager generation. Did they find it incongruous that Moshe, the greatest man they had ever known, the man who now stands before them and exhorts them about right and wrong, sin and its punishment, will himself be banned from entering the Land? Were they perhaps intimidated by the knowledge that even Moshe, who was the greatest prophet who ever lived, was unable to live up to God’s standards? Were they disheartened by the thought that if Moshe had fallen short, it seemed impossible that any mortal could succeed?

Apparently, Moshe was sensitive to these unspoken doubts and ruminations. As he begins his final series of lectures, he describes his personal predicament in very particular language, using an unusual turn of phrase that may give us a glimpse of his frame of mind and allow us to share his perspective. While other nations may worship the sun and moon and stars, he explains, the Jewish People is different. “But you, God Himself took, and He brought you out of the iron crucible that was Egypt, so that you would be His heritage nation, as you are today.” (Devarim 4:20) While the image of the fiery crucible has captured the imagination of many commentaries and remains an enduring metaphor throughout Jewish history, Moshe may have had a very particular idea in mind when he first coined the phrase.

Rashi’s comments on this verse are terse; he explains that the crucible reference means that the Jews are like gold, but does not elaborate. Two 19th century scholars explained this passage at length, coming to widely divergent conclusions: Rabbi Yaakov Zvi Meklenberg (1785-1865) refers to the process of smelting in which metals are purified of dross, and explains that the period of enslavement in Egypt had the same purpose: The Jews were subjected to a painful process that rid them of those who were unworthy, in order to allow them to meet their destiny unencumbered by those who would hold them back. This human dross would have fomented even more unrest and rebellion, and would have been unwilling and unable to receive the Torah or to fulfill the covenant they would undertake as a nation.

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) had a very different approach. Rather than intimating that there were impurities in the Jewish nation that had to be “burned off” in the fiery furnace of Egyptian slavery, Rabbi Hirsch saw the crucible as an experience that gave strength and polish to the morals of the newly-emerging nation. The fires destroyed everything that had been before, allowed the Jews to distill their essential qualities and hone their identity. It is this view of the crucible that may allow us to understand Moshe’s words: His reference to the crucible is his attempt to point out one of the defining characteristics of Jewish nationhood. We are a people with a great capacity to suffer because we have a profound ability to see the long-term repercussions of our actions. Our enslavement in Egypt had not come as a surprise; not only was it foretold to Avraham, it was willingly accepted by him and his descendants as part of a long-term covenant. Avraham’s children would inherit the Land of Israel, they would become a covenantal community and enjoy a unique relationship with God – – but only after 400 years of exile, hardship and slavery. Yaakov accepted this birthright with all its conditions; he and his children, the very core of the Jewish People, were willing to suffer in the “short term” in order to achieve the long-term “payoff.”Only a people with complete faith in the future, only those who are willing to postpone gratification in favor of a much greater spiritual destiny, are capable of accepting a covenant of this kind.

Long before Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, Moshe reminded us that the crucible of Egypt and the experience of slavery did not break us, did not eradicate us as a family or as a covenantal community, did not corrupt our morals; it not only made us stronger, it made us who we are. As he stands at the borders of the Promised Land but is denied entrance, Moshe himself is a living example that gratification of personal desires is far less important to the Jewish ethos than is the larger national destiny. Moshe is able to accept a world in which he is denied his heart’s desire, he is able to withstand his personal pain and frustration, because he has complete faith in the future of the Jewish People and the Word of God.

Moshe’s message to the nation moves seamlessly from an account of his own personal pain to an inspiring account of the strength of his beloved people, even in the face of setbacks that lasted many generations. They have come through the crucible as a nation and they are gold, they are strong, they have been endowed with greatness. The suffering and humiliation, even the death of loved ones that they experienced in the crucible of slavery, has made them stronger, more united, more determined, as well as more aware of the suffering of others. They have refined the ability they inherited from their forefathers to take the long view, to see past the setbacks, even when these have been tragic and extreme. And now, they must see past the death of their greatest prophet and leader. Jewish history, Moshe reminds them, is measured in millennia, not in minutes, and he assures them that they have what it takes to begin the next chapter – just as we, even today, so many generations and so many setbacks later, have what it takes to march toward the fulfillment of our glorious destiny.

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/the-crucible/feed/0Devarim 5775https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/devarim-5775/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/devarim-5775/#commentsThu, 23 Jul 2015 04:16:49 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25722https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/devarim-5775/feed/0Why Are There So Many Jewish Lawyers?https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/why-are-there-so-many-jewish-lawyers/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/why-are-there-so-many-jewish-lawyers/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2015 19:15:22 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25715At the beginning of Devarim, Moses reviews the history of the Israelites’ experience in the wilderness, beginning with the appointment of leaders throughout the people, heads of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. He continues:

And I charged your judges at that time, “Hear the disputes between your people and judge fairly, whether the case is between two Israelites or between an Israelite and a foreigner residing among you. Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike. Do not be afraid of anyone, for judgment belongs to God. Bring me any case too hard for you, and I will hear it. (Deut. 1: 16-17)

Thus at the outset of the book in which he summarized the entire history of Israel and its destiny as a holy people, he already gave priority to the administration of justice: something he would memorably summarize in a later chapter (16: 20) in the words, “Justice, justice, shall you pursue.” The words for justice, tzedek and mishpat, are repeated, recurring themes of the book. The root tz-d-k appears eighteen times in Devarim; the root sh-f-t, forty-eight times.

Justice has seemed, throughout the generations, to lie at the beating heart of Jewish faith. Albert Einstein memorably spoke of “the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence – these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my lucky stars that I belong to it.” In the course of a television programme I made for the BBC I asked Hazel Cosgrove, the first woman to be appointed as a judge in Scotland, and an active member of the Edinburgh Jewish community, what had led her to choose law as a career, she replied as if it was self-evident, “Because Judaism teaches: Justice, justice shall you pursue.”

One of the great Jewish lawyers of our time, Alan Dershowitz, is about to bring out a book about Abraham,[1] whom he sees as the first Jewish lawyer, “the patriarch of the legal profession: a defense lawyer for the damned who is willing to risk everything, even the wrath of God, in defense of his clients,” the founder not just of monotheism but of a long line of Jewish lawyers. Dershowitz gives a vivid description of Abraham’s prayer on behalf of the people of Sodom (“Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?”) as a courtroom drama, with Abraham acting as lawyer for the citizens of the town, and God, as it were, as the accused. This was the forerunner of a great many such episodes in Torah and Tanakh, in which the prophets argued the cause of justice with God and with the people.

In modern times, Jews reached prominence as judges in America: among them Brandeis, Cardozo, and Felix Frankfurter. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court. In Britain, between 1996 and 2008, two of Britain’s three Lord Chief Justices were Jewish: Peter Taylor and Harry Woolf. In Germany in the early 1930s, though Jews were 0.7 per cent of the population, they represented 16.6 per cent of lawyers and judges.

One feature of Tanakh is noteworthy in this context. Throughout the Hebrew Bible some of the most intense encounters between the prophets and God are represented as courtroom dramas. Sometimes, as in the case of Moses, Jeremiah and Habakkuk, the plaintiff is humanity or the Jewish people. In the case of Job it is an individual who has suffered unfairly. The accused is God himself. The story is told by Elie Wiesel of how a case was brought against God by the Jewish prisoners in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.[2] At other times, it is God who brings a case against the children of Israel.

The word the Hebrew Bible uses for these unique dialogues between heaven and earth[3] is riv, which means a law-suit, and it derives from the idea that at the heart of the relationship between God and humanity – both in general, and specifically in relation to the Jewish people – is covenant, that is, a binding agreement, a mutual pledge, based on obedience to God’s law on the part of humans, and on God’s promise of loyalty and love on the part of heaven. Thus either side can, as it were, bring the other to court on grounds of failure to fulfill their undertakings.

Three features mark Judaism as a distinctive faith. First is the radical idea that when God reveals himself to humans He does so in the form of law. In the ancient world, God was power. In Judaism, God is order, and order presupposes law. In the natural world of cause and effect, order takes the form of scientific law. But in the human world, where we have freewill, order takes the form of moral law. Hence the name of the Mosaic books: Torah, which means ‘direction, guidance, teaching,’ but above all ‘law.’ The most basic meaning[4] of the most fundamental principle of Judaism, Torah min ha-Shamayim, ‘Torah from Heaven,’ is that God, not humans, is the source of binding law.

Second, we are charged with being interpreters of the law. That is our responsibility as heirs and guardians of the Torah she-be-al peh, the Oral Tradition. The phrase in which Moses describes the voice the people heard at the revelation at Sinai, kol gadol velo yasaf, is understood by the commentators in two seemingly contradictory ways. On the one hand it means ‘the voice that was never heard again’; on the other, it means ‘the voice that did not cease,’ that is, the voice that was ever heard again.[5] There is, though, no contradiction. The voice that was never heard again is the one that represents the Written Torah. The voice that is ever heard again is that of the Oral Torah.

The Written Torah is min ha-shamayim, “from Heaven,” but about the Oral Torah the Talmud insists Lo ba-shamayim hi, “It is not in heaven.”[6] Hence Judaism is a continuing conversation between the Giver of the law in Heaven and the interpreters of the law on Earth. That is part of what the Talmud means when it says that “Every judge who delivers a true judgment becomes a partner with the Holy One, blessed be He, in the work of creation.”[7]

Third, fundamental to Judaism is education, and fundamental to Jewish education is instruction in Torah, that is, the law. That is what Isaiah meant when he said, “Listen to Me, you who know justice, the people in whose heart is My law; do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults” (Is. 51: 7). It is what Jeremiah meant when he said, “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31: 33). It is what Josephus meant when he said, nineteen hundred years ago, “Should any one of our nation be asked about our laws, he will repeat them as readily as his own name.” The result of our thorough education in our laws from the very dawn of intelligence is that they are, as it were, engraved on our souls. To be a Jewish child is to be, in the British phrase, “learned in the law.” We are a nation of constitutional lawyers.

Why? Because Judaism is not just about spirituality. It is not simply a code for the salvation of the soul. It is a set of instructions for the creation of what the late Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein z”l called “societal beatitude.” It is about bringing God into the shared spaces of our collective life. That needs law: law that represents justice, honoring all humans alike regardless of colour or class, that judges impartially between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, even in extremis between humanity and God, the law that links God, its Giver, to us, its interpreters, the law that alone allows freedom to coexist with order, so that my freedom is not bought at the cost of yours.

[2] Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God, Schocken, 1995. The story is believed to be fictional, though on one occasion Wiesel said that it happened and that he was there.

[3] On the subject in general, see Anson Laytner, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition, Jason Aronson, 1977.

[4] Not the only meaning, to be sure. See Rambam, Hilkhot Teshuvah 3: 5.

[5] Deut. 5: 19, and see Rashi ad loc., who gives both interpretations.

[6] Baba Metzia 59b.

[7] Shabbat

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/why-are-there-so-many-jewish-lawyers/feed/0Parshat Devarim – A Place of Lovehttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-devarim-a-place-of-love/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-devarim-a-place-of-love/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2015 18:56:58 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25714No matter what, I still love you…. Devorah Jaye, Atlantic Seaboard, New England and Southern NCSY, and current MEOR Maryland Assistant DIrector, introduces us to Sefer Devarim, as well as how it relates to this time of year, NCSY, to teach us an important message about staying inspired even during the darkest times.
]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-devarim-a-place-of-love/feed/0Sin Crouches At the Door: Tisha B’Avhttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/harrys-video-blog/sin-crouches-at-the-door-tisha-bav/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/harrys-video-blog/sin-crouches-at-the-door-tisha-bav/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2015 18:46:01 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25713

Their sin took place thousands of years ago, but the story of the spies still haunts us.

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/harrys-video-blog/sin-crouches-at-the-door-tisha-bav/feed/0Parshat Devarim & Tisha B’av 5775https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-taub-on-parsha/parshat-devarim-tisha-bav-5775/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-taub-on-parsha/parshat-devarim-tisha-bav-5775/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2015 16:01:03 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25712https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-taub-on-parsha/parshat-devarim-tisha-bav-5775/feed/0It’s About Timehttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/its-about-time/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/its-about-time/#commentsMon, 20 Jul 2015 09:33:17 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25691This week’s Torah reading is the first in a new book, but for the most part it is a book that tells an old story, a book whose very existence is born of tragedy. Moshe is close to death; he will not cross over the Jordan River to the Land of Israel, and he opens his final series of speeches with a retrospective. How did we get here? Where did we go wrong? Can we avoid such mistakes in the future?

These are the words that Moshe spoke to all Israel on the east bank of the Jordan, …An eleven day journey from Horev to Kadesh Barnea by way of the Se’ir highlands. (Dvarim 1:1,2)

The Jews have arrived at the cusp of the Holy Land, at the banks of a river that the disciples will cross without their master. After forty years of wandering, Moshe reveals that the actual distance between the Land of Israel and Horev (also known as Sinai), the place the detour began, is a mere eleven-day journey. So many years wasted, so many lives lost, and it all could have been avoided.

How, indeed, had it come to this? At Horev, Moshe was first called upon to lead the Jewish People out of slavery. There, he saw a bush that burned but was not consumed, a symbol of eternity, of God’s existence beyond the confines of space and time. This personal revelation was later shared with the entire Jewish People at that very same spot, just as God had promised Moshe at the start (Shmot 3:12): The personal, micro-revelation was transformed into a macro-revelation, The Revelation, that would forge a nation and change the world.

At that same spot, Moshe climbed to the summit and received a physical manifestation of the Revelation, the Tablets of Stone – and, at that very same spot, things went awry. The people panicked; it seemed to them that too much time had passed, and Moshe had not survived his encounter with God. Rather than putting their faith in Moshe’s unique capabilities or in God’s express commitment, they allowed fear to overtake them; they sought out an alternative to Moshe–and the golden calf was formed. How quickly they regressed! They had heard God Himself speak to them only 40 days earlier, but they managed to forget both the experience of that Revelation and its content. The roar of the frenzied crowd, the beating drums and rhythmic chants of the idolatrous orgy, drowned out the sights and sounds of the Revelation at Sinai and the Ten Commandments.

Moshe’s descent from the mountain, with the Tablets in his arms, should have been cause for celebration; that day should have been known for all time as “Simchat Torah,” a day of rejoicing with the Torah. Instead, Moshe’s return to the camp went unnoticed by the people below, who were too busy worshipping the golden calf to pay any attention to him or to the gift he had brought down to them. And then, at that very same spot, Moshe, who had no part in the inconceivable sin, prayed and pleaded for forgiveness on behalf of the nation. At that very spot, the detour began, and it is the narrative of that detour that comprises the next two books of the Torah – a long, arduous, 39-year trek that should have taken only 11 days.

When we stood at Sinai, we had been heartbreakingly close to our destination, but we lost track of time. We concerned ourselves with Moshe’s tardiness, and paid no attention to the fact that we had, in fact, lost our grasp on time itself, and turned an eleven-day journey into decades of wandering.

Rashi offers a fascinating insight into this eleven-day distance: When we finally made the journey in earnest, it only took three days. (Rashi on Devarim 1:2)

In fact, this peculiar, kaleidoscopic time-line is more relevant to our lives than it might seem at first glance. Time is a strange and slippery concept: Often, there are life-lessons that normally take years to learn, which can be acquired in a flash, in a lightning-bolt of clarity, in what is known as an “ah-hah! moment.” On the long and winding road, a short and direct route is suddenly illuminated. Other times, we see the light yet repeatedly ignore the message;repeating the same mistakes over and over, we force ourselves to take unnecessary detours and to expend our emotional, intellectual and physical energy going around in circles.

Our normal perception of time is linear and constant; we are, by and large, “captives on a carousel of time,” unable to break through, to transcend. Yet there are some people (and some situations) who manage to break these boundaries. Unfortunately, it often takes a cataclysm to grab our attention. We are only shaken out of our reverie by personal or national crises – or worse.This is the lesson of the first few words of the Book of Devarim: It took the Jewish People thirty-nine years to achieve what we should have accomplished in eleven days, but when we were finally ready – spiritually alert, attentive, and willing to take step up to meet our destiny – the eleven-day journey was completed in three days.

All these years after the destruction of the Temple, it is clear to us that we have taken a two-thousand-year detour. But it should be equally clear to us that we are – and always have been – heartbreakingly close to our destination. The final distance can be achieved in days, minutes, perhaps even seconds – when we are finally ready to take those last few holy steps.

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/its-about-time/feed/0Matos Maasei 5775https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/matos-maasei-5775/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/matos-maasei-5775/#commentsThu, 16 Jul 2015 03:28:09 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25668https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/matos-maasei-5775/feed/0Retribution and Revengehttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/retribution-and-revenge/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/retribution-and-revenge/#commentsWed, 15 Jul 2015 21:24:13 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25666Near the end of Bemidbar, we encounter the law of the cities of refuge: three cities to the east of the Jordan and, later, three more within the land of Israel itself. There, people who had committed homicide could flee and find protection until their case was heard by a court of law. If they were found guilty of murder, in biblical times they were sentenced to death. If found innocent – if the death happened by accident or inadvertently, with neither deliberation nor malice – then they were to stay in the city of refuge “until the death of the High priest.” There, they were protected against revenge on the part of the goel ha-dam, the blood-redeemer, usually the closest relative of the person who had been killed.

Homicide is never less than serious in Jewish law. But there is a fundamental difference between murder – deliberate killing – and manslaughter, accidental death. To kill someone not guilty of murder as an act of revenge for an accidental death is not justice but further bloodshed, and must be prevented. Hence the need for safe havens where people at risk could be protected.

The prevention of unjust violence is fundamental to the Torah. God’s covenant with Noah and humankind after the Flood identifies murder as the ultimate crime: “He who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God, God created man” (Gen. 9: 6). Blood wrongly shed cries to Heaven itself. God said to Cain after he had murdered Abel, “Your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground” (Gen. 4: 10).

Here in Bemidbar we hear a similar sentiment: “You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and the land can have no expiation for blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it” (Num. 35: 13). The verb ch-n-ph, which appears twice in this verse and nowhere else in the Mosaic books, means to pollute, to soil, to dirty, to defile. There is something fundamentally blemished about a world in which murder goes unpunished. Human life is sacred. Even justified acts of bloodshed, as in the case of war, still communicate impurity. A Cohen who has shed blood does not bless the people.[1] David is told that he may not build the Temple “because you shed much blood.”[2] Death defiles.

That is what lies behind the idea of revenge. And though the Torah rejects revenge except when commanded by God,[3] something of the idea survives in the concept of the goel ha-dam, wrongly translated as ‘blood-avenger.’ It means, in fact, ‘blood-redeemer.’ A redeemer is someone who rights an imbalance in the world, who rescues someone or something and restores it to its rightful place. Thus Boaz redeems land belonging to Naomi.[4] A redeemer is one who restores a relative to freedom after they have been forced to sell themselves into slavery.[5] God redeems His people from bondage in Egypt. A blood-redeemer is one who ensures that murder does not go unpunished.

However not all acts of killing are murder. Some are bi-shgagah, that is, unintentional, accidental or inadvertent. These are the acts that lead to exile in the cities of refuge. However, there is an ambiguity about this law. Was exile to the cities of refuge considered as a way of protecting the accidental killer, or was it itself a form of punishment, not the death sentence that would have applied to one guilty of murder, but punishment none the less. Recall that exile is a biblical form of punishment. Adam and Eve, after their sin, were exiled from Eden. Cain, after killing Abel, was told he would be “a restless wanderer on the face of the earth.” We say in our prayers, “Because of our sins we were exiled from our land.”

In truth both elements are present. On the one hand the Torah says, “The assembly must protect the one accused of murder from the redeemer of blood and send the accused back to the city of refuge to which they fled” (Num. 35: 25). Here the emphasis is on protection. But on the other, we read that if the exiled person “ever goes outside the limits of the city of refuge to which they fled and the redeemer of blood finds them outside the city, the redeemer of blood may kill the accused without being guilty of murder” (Num. 35: 26-27). Here an element of guilt is presumed, otherwise why would the blood redeemer be innocent of murder?[6]

We can see the difference by looking at how the Talmud and Maimonides explain the provision that the exile must stay in the city of refuge until the death of the High Priest. What had the High Priest to do with accidental killing? According to the Talmud, the High Priest “should have asked for mercy [i.e. should have prayed that there be no accidental deaths among the people] and he did not do so.”[7] The assumption is that had the High Priest prayed more fervently, God would not have allowed this accident to happen. Whether or not there is moral guilt, something wrong has occurred and there is a need for atonement, achieved partly through exile and partly through the death of the High Priest. For the High Priest atoned for the people as a whole, and when he died, his death atoned for the death of those who were accidently killed.

Maimonides, however, gives a completely different explanation in The Guide for the Perplexed (III: 40). For him the issue at stake is not atonement but protection. The reason the man goes into exile in a city of refuge is to allow the passions of the relative of the victim, the blood-redeemer, to cool. The exile stays there until the death of the High Priest, because his death creates a mood of national mourning, which dissolves the longing for revenge – “for it is a natural phenomenon that we find consolation in our misfortune when the same misfortune or a greater one befalls another person. Amongst us no death causes more grief than that of the High Priest.”

The desire for revenge is basic. It exists in all societies. It led to cycles of retaliation – the Montagues against the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet, the Corleones and Tattaglias in The Godfather – that have no natural end. Wars of the clans were capable of destroying whole societies.[8]

The Torah, understanding that the desire for revenge as natural, tames it by translating it into something else altogether. It recognizes the pain, the loss and moral indignation of the family of the victim. That is the meaning of the phrase goel ha-dam, the blood-redeemer, the figure who represents that instinct for revenge. The Torah legislates for people with all their passions, not for saints. It is a realistic code, not a utopian one.
Yet the Torah inserts one vital element between the killer and the victim’s family: the principle of justice. There must be no direct act of revenge. The killer must be protected until his case has been heard in a court of law. If found guilty, he must pay the price. If found innocent, he must be given refuge. This single act turns revenge into retribution. This makes all the difference.

People often find it difficult to distinguish retribution and revenge, yet they are completely different concepts. Revenge is an I-Thou relationship. You killed a member of my family so I will kill you. It is intrinsically personal. Retribution, by contrast, is impersonal. It is no longer the Montagues against the Capulets but both under the impartial rule of law. Indeed the best definition of the society the Torah seeks to create is nomocracy: the rule of laws, not men.

Retribution is the principled rejection of revenge. It says that we are not free to take the law into our own hands. Passion may not override the due process of the law, for that is a sure route to anarchy and bloodshed. Wrong must be punished, but only after it has been established by a fair trial, and only on behalf, not just of the victim but of society as a whole. It was this principle that drove the work of the late Simon Wiesenthal in bringing Nazi war criminals to trial. He called his biography Justice, not Vengeance. The cities of refuge were part of this process by which vengeance was subordinated to, and replaced by, retributive justice.

This is not just ancient history. Almost as soon as the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War came to an end in 1989, brutal ethnic war came to the former Yugoslavia, first in Bosnia then Kosovo. It has now spread to Iraq, Syria and many other parts of the world. In his book The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, Michael Ignatieff wondered how these regions descended so rapidly into chaos. This was his conclusion:

The chief moral obstacle in the path of reconciliation is the desire for revenge. Now, revenge is commonly regarded as a low and unworthy emotion, and because it is regarded as such, its deep moral hold on people is rarely understood. But revenge – morally considered – is a desire to keep faith with the dead, to honor their memory by taking up their cause where they left off. Revenge keeps faith between the generations; the violence it engenders is a ritual form of respect for the community’s dead – therein lies its legitimacy. Reconciliation is difficult precisely because it must compete with the powerful alternative morality of violence. Political terror is tenacious because it is an ethical practice. It is a cult of the dead, a dire and absolute expression of respect.[9]

It is foolhardy to act as if the desire for revenge does not exist. It does. But given free reign, it will reduce societies to violence and bloodshed without end. The only alternative is to channel it through the operation of law, fair trial, and then either punishment or protection. That is what was introduced into civilization by the law of the cities of refuge, allowing retribution to take the place of revenge, and justice the place of retaliation.
[1] Berakhot 32b; Rambam, Hilkhot Tefillah 15: 3.

[2] I Chronciles 22: 8.

[3] Only God, the giver of life, can command us to take life, and then often only on the basis of facts known to God but not to us.

Before the first personal injury attorneys opened their offices, what happened to people who killed others negligently?

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/harrys-video-blog/cities-of-refuge-parshat-matos-masei/feed/0Parshat Matot – Watch Your Mouthhttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-matot-watch-your-mouth/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-matot-watch-your-mouth/#commentsTue, 14 Jul 2015 19:00:15 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25647Hashem gave you a gift- it’s up to you to use it right! This week, Rachel Shammah, NJ NCSY, teaches us about the power of speech and how it sets us apart.
]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-matot-watch-your-mouth/feed/0Matos-Masei 5775https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-immanuel-bernstein-on-parsha/matos-masei-5775/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-immanuel-bernstein-on-parsha/matos-masei-5775/#commentsTue, 14 Jul 2015 18:53:22 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25646https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-immanuel-bernstein-on-parsha/matos-masei-5775/feed/0Purifying Midianite Spoils – From What?https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/alhatorah/purifying-midianite-spoils-from-what/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/alhatorah/purifying-midianite-spoils-from-what/#commentsMon, 13 Jul 2015 18:40:19 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25639

Introduction

Wars and Mitzvot

The second half of Sefer Bemidbar describes the battles which the Children of Israel fought during their fortieth year in the Wilderness against Arad, Sichon, Og,[1] and Midyan. While the earlier battles mentioned no special halakhic directives, the conquest of Midyan (Bemidbar 31) stands out in that it is followed by two sets of halakhic prescriptions for the purification of the returning soldiers and their belongings. Why did the Torah wait to convey these laws until the Midyan campaign? Did they apply only now and not in the earlier victories? Was there something unique about the conflict with Midyan?

Dual Ordinances

The first group of laws is transmitted by Moshe himself, and they explicitly command ritual purification from contact with dead bodies:

(19) And you shall encamp yourselves outside the camp seven days, whoever has killed a person and whoever has touched a slain man, purify yourselves on the third day and on the seventh day, you and your captives. (20) And every garment, and every skin vessel, and every work of goats, and every wooden vessel you shall purify.

These verses are then immediately followed by a second set of instructions, but these are imparted by Elazar and they are less explicit as to what necessitates their purification processes:

(21) And Elazar the Priest said to the men of the army who go in to battle: “This is the law of the Torah that Hashem has commanded Moshe: (22) ‘But the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin and the lead. (23) Everything which may go into fire, you shall pass through fire, and it will be purified, but it shall be purified in water of separation, and everything which may not go into fire, shall go through water. (24) And you shall wash your clothes on the seventh day and you will be purified, and afterwards you shall come into the camp.'”

What is the relationship between the two sets of verses? Do verses 21-23 also speak of impurity from a corpse?[2] If so, why are they communicated separately from the earlier verses?

Bemidbar 19 and 31

As can be seen from the following table, both groups of verses in Bemidbar 31 contain distinct parallels[3] to the laws of purification from corpse contamination detailed in Bemidbar 19:

At first glance, these similarities would seem to indicate that the latter verses also speak of corpse contamination. However, if so, why did the Torah not convey these laws already in Chapter 19? And why would the Torah give the impression there that sprinkling water always suffices, when really some materials require an additional purification by fire?

These questions led Rabbinic exegetes and others to reexamine the assumptions about the subject matter of our verses, and to explore the possibility that they serve as the source for entirely different realms of halakhah. In Approaches, we will analyze these various options.

1. These all preceded the war with Midyan. Additional battles are mentioned in Bemidbar 32:39-42, but their chronology is more ambiguous.

2. There appears to be virtual unanimity that verse 24 speaks of the purification from contact with a dead body. Thus, much of the discussion revolves around the subject matter of verses 21-23 only.

3. Particularly striking is the use of the term “מֵי נִדָּה”, which occurs in the Torah only in these two chapters.

Would you ever imagine that our holy Sages had a lot to say about a kiss? Would we not assume that kisses would be judged unworthy of their consideration?

But such is not the case. They had much to say about kisses.

The significance of the kiss was brought home to me recently when I came across a street sign advertising a film. It read, “Is not a kiss the very signature of love?” Indeed it is, so much so that the kiss plays a role in the spiritual realm. Thus, the Song of Songs, the biblical book which is traditionally interpreted as a description of the passionate love affair between God and His people, begins with the phrase, “Let Him give me of the kisses of His mouth.”

The Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 70:12) distinguishes between three significant types of kisses. One is the “kiss of greatness,” which is exemplified by the prophet Samuel’s kissing Saul when he anointed him king. Another is the “kiss of special occasions”—Aaron’s kissing Moses upon their reunion. The third kiss is the “kiss of separation,” the kiss given at the moment we take leave from one another. It is the “kiss of departure”.

This third kiss comes with mixed feelings. On the one hand, we are bidding farewell to a beloved friend and are saddened to say goodbye. On the other hand, we are leaving for a reason—to encounter a new friend or a new opportunity. This is a tearful kiss, but it is also a kiss of anticipation, a kiss of hope, a kiss which signifies the beginning of a new journey.

In the second of this week’s two Torah portions, Matot and Masei (Numbers 30:2-36:13), we read of no less than fifty such journeys. The Torah describes the long and arduous procession of the people of Israel as they left Egypt and marched toward the Promised Land. They stopped at fifty stations along the way.

We can assume that after they settled in to one station, they had some reluctance to leave a familiar place, a place of shelter, and to plunge ahead into the unknown. But we can also imagine the joyous emotions they experienced, knowing that they were taking another step toward their desired destination.

This is the way of all journeys. Moreover, it is the very essence of life itself. We settle in to one place, to one role, to one stage of life. It becomes familiar to us, and we feel comfortable there. Moving on to a new place, a new role, a new stage of life, feels threatening. Often we are tempted to remain in that place, to continue to live in the status quo. We don’t want to kiss this familiar station goodbye.

On the other hand, we often find this old place tiring, boring. We no longer feel the challenges we felt when we first came to this station, to this point in our lives. We relish the opportunity to move on, in spite of the uncertainty that lies ahead. We look forward to the novelty of a new place, a new role, a new stage of life.

There is a contemporary poet whose works I admire. Here is how he puts it:

I envy those

who live in two places

New York, say, and London…

There is always the anticipation

of the change, the chance that what is wrong

is the result of where you are. I have

always loved both the freshness of

arriving and the relief of leaving. With

two homes every move would be a homecoming.

I am not even considering the weather, hot

Or cold, dry or wet: I am talking about hope.

(Gerald Locklin, Where We Are).

It is no secret that many of us find the first fifty or so verses of Parshat Masei repetitive and dry. “These were the marches of the Israelites who started out from the land of Egypt…Their marches, by starting points, were as follows: They set out from Rameses…And encamped at Succoth. They set out from Succoth and encamped at Etham…They set out from Etham and turned about toward Pi Hahiroth, which faces Baal Zephon, and they encamped before Migdol…They set out from the hills of Abarim and encamped at the steppes of Moab, at the Jordan near Jericho…”

Of what possible interest can this long list of stations in the wilderness be to the average reader? What can he possibly learn from these verses?

Commentators throughout the ages have struggled with these very questions and have offered various approaches to answering them. I would like to advance an original approach, a metaphorical one. We suggest that just as the Israelites embarked upon a journey when they left Egypt, so do we all embark upon a journey the moment we are born. This journey entails many stations along the way before it is completed. Each station is necessary for the individual’s development, but no one station can be permanent.

Psychologists discuss the concept of “developmental tasks.” Each stage of life has its developmental task. The infant must learn to crawl, but his failure to move on from the crawling stage to the walking stage is a symptom of pathology. The two- or three-year-old who has mastered the human need to become attached to his parents must soon proceed to the next stage and learn to separate from them.

While all this is true at the physical level, it is also true of intellectual development. The ten-year-old who is still reading the books he read when he was five has a stunted intellect. But so does the fifty-year-old who has not transcended the literary interests he had when he was twenty.

The need to progress from station to station is especially true when it comes to spirituality. It has been said, correctly, that children are naturally spiritual. But childlike spirituality cannot slake the spiritual thirst of the adolescent. And the adult whose spirituality has not progressed beyond adolescence is a spiritual cripple. The inner resources that serve the adolescent well are of no help in coping with the challenges of adulthood.

And so it goes from stage to stage until the end of life.

Rabbi Judah ben Tema put it this way: “Five years old is the age to begin studying Scripture; ten for Mishnah; thirteen for the obligation of the commandments; fifteen for the study of Talmud; eighteen for marriage; twenty for seeking a livelihood; thirty for full strength; forty for understanding; fifty for giving counsel; sixty for old age; seventy for ripe old age; eighty for exceptional strength; and ninety for a bent back; at one hundred, one is as if he were dead and had left and gone from the world.” (Avot 5:25)

Fifty stations were necessary for the Israelites to reach the Promised Land. At least as many are required of all of us if we are to reach our God-given potential as mature human beings. As we journey from station to stat​ion in our lives, we need to learn to kiss the kiss of departure, which is also the kiss of hope.

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-weinreb-on-parsha/matot-masei-the-kiss-of-hope/feed/0A Lush Landhttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/a-lush-land/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/a-lush-land/#commentsMon, 13 Jul 2015 09:52:06 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25627After countless delays, punishments and disappointments, as the Jews draw tantalizingly close to the Promised Land, a strange request is made by the tribes of Reuven and Gad:

They said, ‘If you would grant us a favor, let this land be given to us as our permanent property, and do not bring us across the Jordan.’ (B’midbar 32:5)

These words must have been particularly painful to Moshe: He pined and prayed for permission to cross into the Land of Israel, while these tribes, Reuven and Gad, seek permission to do just the opposite. They hope to remain outside the Land, on the eastern bank of the Jordan River.

Moshe’s initial response is far from enthusiastic, but subsequently terms and conditions are worked out to satisfy both sides: These tribes will take an active role in the conquest of the Promised Land, and only then will they return to the lush grazing land they have chosen outside of Israel proper.

The descendants of Gad and Reuven responded, ‘We will do whatever God has told us.We will cross over as a special force to the land of Canaan, and we shall then have our permanent hereditary property on [this] side of the Jordan.’ (B’midbar 32:31, 32)

Quietly, almost imperceptibly, when the deal is finalized, a third tribe materializes, and joins the other two tribes in Transjordan:

To the descendants of Gad and Reuven, and to half the tribe of Menasheh (son of Yosef), Moshe then gave the kingdom of Sichon (king of the Amorites) and the kingdom of Og (king of the Bashan). [He gave them] the land along with the cities along its surrounding borders. (B’midbar 32:33)

For some unexplained reason, a third tribe, Menasheh is included in this arrangement. The Torah offers no explanation; various commentaries have attempted to fill in the gaps. Ramban suggests that the tribes of Reuven and Gad initiated the broadening of their “coalition” in an attempt to ameliorate their feelings of isolation. A considerable number of the members of Menasheh were persuaded that the “REAL estate” already conquered by the Israelites on the eastern bank of the Jordan was preferable to the “theoretical” land that awaited them, as yet unconquered, on the other side. In Ramban’s view, Menashe joined the other two tribes in an arrangement motivated by greed; their only thought was of turning a “quick buck.”

An almost diametrically opposed explanation is offered by the famed Rosh Yeshiva of Volozhin, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin. In his view, the addition of the Menashites to this group was not initiated by any of the three tribes involved; rather, the “culprit” was Moshe himself. Moshe was the greatest leader of the Jewish People and as such, he was unwilling to leave part of his flock – especially those who seemed to be “ideologically challenged,” who preferred the anticipated profits from their flocks to life in the Holy Land – all alone outside the borders of Israel. Moshe chose a group of people whom he felt he could trust to be the spiritual leaders and teachers of this far-flung community. Moshe hoped that these descendants of Yosef would follow their forefather’s example, and take care of their brothers. He had faith in the power of Jewish community, and relied upon the mutual responsibility that members of all Jewish communities have to look after one another– socially and spiritually.

Was it greed or ideology, then, that led half the families of the tribe of Menashe to join those who chose the verdant lands outside of Israel? In either case, their social experiment was neither successful nor long-lived. When the Children of Israel were cast into exile, these two-and-a-half tribes were the first to be carried off into captivity, the first to be lost. The East Bank never became a place that could boast about its thriving, vibrant, Torah-centric community. In fact, the only thing they might have boasted about was their identification with the mysterious, unmarked grave of a great Jew who very much wished to cross the Jordan – the man who was outraged by their request to stay outside the Land: Tragically, Moshe, our greatest teacher and our most faithful shepherd, was forced to remain just beyond the border, together with a few tribes who were, just as tragically, indifferent.

For a more in-depth analysis see:
http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2015/07/audio-and-essays-parshiot-matot-masai.html

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/a-lush-land/feed/0Parshat Pinchas 5775 and The Three Weekshttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/torah-tidbits/parshat-pinchas-5775/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/torah-tidbits/parshat-pinchas-5775/#commentsThu, 09 Jul 2015 16:25:12 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25613https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/torah-tidbits/parshat-pinchas-5775/feed/0Rav Chaim Shmulevitch and The Three Weekshttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/good-vort/rav-chaim-shmulevitch-and-the-three-weeks/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/good-vort/rav-chaim-shmulevitch-and-the-three-weeks/#commentsThu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:26 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25611https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/good-vort/rav-chaim-shmulevitch-and-the-three-weeks/feed/0Parshat Pinchas: Leadership 101https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-pinchas-leadership-101/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-pinchas-leadership-101/#commentsThu, 09 Jul 2015 15:22:15 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25574What does it take to be a good leader? Daniel Levine, West Coast NCSY, goes through the parsha, as well as what we know about Yehoshua, to teach us an important lesson about different styles of leadership.
]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/thinkingj/parshat-pinchas-leadership-101/feed/0Elijah and the Still, Small Voicehttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/elijah-and-the-still-small-voice/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/elijah-and-the-still-small-voice/#commentsWed, 08 Jul 2015 20:54:00 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25572Then the word of the Lord came to him: ‘Why are you here, Elijah?’ He replied, I am moved by the zeal for the Lord, God of Hosts…” The Lord said to him, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind was an earthquake , but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire – a still, small voice. (I Kings 19:9-12)

In 1165, an agonising question confronted Moroccan Jewry. A fanatical Muslim sect, the Almohads, had seized power and were embarked on a policy of forced conversion to Islam. The Jewish community was faced with a choice: to affirm Islamic faith or die.

Some chose martyrdom. Others chose exile. But some acceded to terror and embraced another faith. Inwardly, though, they remained Jews and practiced Judaism in secret. They were the conversos, or as the Spanish were later to call them, the marranos.

To other Jews, they posed a formidable moral problem. How were they to be viewed? Outwardly, they had betrayed their community and their religious heritage. Besides, their example was demoralising. It weakened the resolve of Jews who were determined to resist, come what may. Yet many of the conversos still wished to remain Jewish, secretly fulfill the commandments and when they could, attend the synagogue and pray.

One of them addressed this question to a rabbi. He had, he said, converted under coercion, but he remained at heart a faithful Jew. Could he obtain merit by observing in private as many of the Torah’s precepts as possible? Was there, in other words, hope left for him as a Jew?

The rabbi’s reply was emphatic. A Jew who had embraced Islam had forfeited membership in the Jewish community. He was no longer part of the house of Israel. For such a person to fulfill the commandments was meaningless. Worse, it was a sin. The choice was stark and absolute: to be or not to be a Jew. If you choose to be a Jew, you should be prepared to suffer death rather than compromise. If you choose not to be a Jew, then you must not seek to re-enter the house you had deserted.

We can respect the firmness of the rabbi’s stance. He set out, without equivocation, the moral choice. There are times when heroism is, for faith, a categorical imperative. Nothing less will do. His reply, though harsh, is not without courage. But another rabbi disagreed.

The name of the first rabbi is lost to us, but that of the second is not. He was Moses Maimonides, the greatest rabbi of the Middle Ages. Maimonides was no stranger to religious persecution. Born in Cordova in 1135, he had been forced to leave, along with his family, some thirteen years later when the city fell to the Almohads. Twelve years were spent in wandering. In 1160, a temporary liberalisation of Almohad rule allowed the family to settle in Morocco. Within five years he was forced to move again, settling first in the land of Israel and ultimately in Egypt.

Maimonides was so incensed by the rabbi’s reply to the forced convert that he wrote a response of his own. In it, he frankly disassociates himself from the earlier ruling and castigates its author whom he describes as a ‘self-styled sage who has never experienced what so many Jewish communities had to endure in the way of persecution’.

Maimonides’ reply, the Iggeret ha-Shemad(‘Epistle on Forced Conversion’), is a substantial treatise in its own right. [1] What is striking, given the vehemence with which it begins, is that its conclusions are hardly less demanding than those of the earlier response. If you are faced with religious persecution, says Maimonides, you must leave and settle elsewhere. ‘If he is compelled to violate even one precept it is forbidden to stay there. He must leave everything he has and travel day and night until he finds a spot where he can practice his religion.’ This is preferable to martyrdom.

None the less, one who chooses to go to his death rather than renounce his faith ‘has done what is good and proper’ for he has given his life for the sanctity of God. What is unacceptable is to stay and excuse oneself on the grounds that if one sins, one does so only under pressure. To do this to profane God’s name, ‘not exactly willingly, but almost so’.

These are Maimonides’ conclusions. But surrounding them and constituting the main thrust of his argument is a sustained defence of those who had done precisely what Maimonides had ruled they should not do. The letter gives conversos hope.

They have done wrong. But it is a forgivable wrong. They acted under coercion and the fear of death. They remain Jews. The acts they do as Jews still win favour in the eyes of God. Indeed doubly so, for when they fulfill a commandment it cannot be to win favour of the eyes of others. They know that when they act as Jews they risk discovery and death. Their secret adherence has a heroism of its own.

What was wrong in the first rabbi’s ruling was his insistence that a Jew who yields to terror has forsaken his faith and is to be excluded from the community. Maimonides insists that it is not so. ‘It is not right to alienate, scorn and hate people who desecrate the Sabbath. It is our duty to befriend them and encourage them to fulfill the commandments.’ In a daring stroke of interpretation, he quotes the verse: ‘Do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving’ (Proverbs 6:30). The conversos who come to the synagogue are hungry for Jewish prayer. They ‘steal’ moments of belonging. They should not be despised, but welcomed.

This Epistle is a masterly example of that most difficult of moral challenges: to combine prescription and compassion. Maimonides leaves us in no doubt as to what he believes Jews should do. But at the same time he is uncompromising in his defence of those who fail to do it. He does not endorse what they have done. But he defends who they are. He asks us to understand their situation. He gives them grounds for self respect. He holds the doors of the community open.

The argument reaches a climax as Maimonides quotes a remarkable sequence of midrashic passages whose theme is that prophets must not condemn their people, but rather defend them before God.

When Moses, charged with leading the people out of Egypt, replied, ‘But they will not believe me’ (Exodus 4:1), ostensibly he was justified. The subsequent biblical narrative suggests that Moses’ doubts were well founded. The Israelites were a difficult people to lead. But the midrash says that God replied to Moses, ‘They are believers and the children of believers, but you [Moses] will ultimately not believe.’[2]

Maimonides cites a series of similar passages and then says: If this is the punishment meted out to the pillars of the universe, the greatest of the prophets, because they briefly criticised the people – even though they were guilty of the sins of which they were accused – can we envisage the punishment awaiting those who criticise the conversos, who under threat of death and without abandoning their faith, confessed to another religion in which they did not believe?

In the course of his analysis, Maimonides turns to the prophet Elijah and the text that forms this week’s haftarah. Under the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, Baal worship had become the official cult. God’s prophets were being killed. Those who survived were in hiding. Elijah responded by issuing a public challenge at Mount Carmel. Facing four hundred of Baal’s representatives, he was determined to settle the question of religious truth once and for all.

He told the assembled people to choose one way or another: for God or for Baal. They must no longer ‘halt between two opinions’. Truth was about to be decided by a test. If it lay with Baal, fire would consume the offering prepared by its priests. If it lay with God, fire would descend to Elijah’s offering.

Elijah won the confrontation. The people cried out, ‘The Lord, He is God.’ The priests of Baal were routed. But the story does not end there. Jezebel issued a warrant for his death. Elijah escapes to Mount Horeb. There he receives a strange vision. He witnesses a whirlwind, then an earthquake, then a fire. But he is led to understand that God was not in these things. Then God speaks to him in a ‘still, small voice’, and tells him to appoint Elisha as his successor.

The episode is enigmatic. It is made all the more so by a strange feature of the text. Immediately before the vision, God asks, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ and Elijah replies, ‘I am moved by zeal for the Lord, the God of Hosts….’ (I Kings 9:9-10). Immediately after the vision, God asks the same question, and Elijah gives the same answer (I Kings 19:13-14). The midrash turns the text into a dialogue:

Elijah: The Israelites have broken God’s covenant

God: Is it then your covenant?

Elijah: They have torn down Your altars God: But were they your altars?

Elijah: They have put Your prophets to the sword.

God: But you are alive

Elijah: I alone am left

God: Instead of hurling accusations against Israel, should you not have pleaded their cause?[3]

The meaning of the midrash is clear. The zealot takes the part of God. But God expects His prophets to be defenders, not accusers.

The repeated question and answer is now to be understood in its tragic depth. Elijah declares himself to be zealous for God. He is shown that God is not disclosed in dramatic confrontation: not in the whirlwind or the earthquake or the fire. God now asks him again, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ Elijah repeats that he is zealous for God. He has not understood that religious leadership calls for another kind of virtue, the way of the still, small voice. God now indicates that someone else must lead. Elijah must hand his mantle on to Elisha.

In turbulent times, there is an almost overwhelming temptation for religious leaders to be confrontational. Not only must truth be proclaimed but falsehood must be denounced. Choices must be set out as stark divisions. Not to condemn is to condone. The rabbi who condemned the conversos had faith in his heart, logic on his side and Elijah as his precedent.

But the midrash and Maimonides set before us another model. A prophet hears not one imperative but two: guidance and compassion, a love of truth and an abiding solidarity with those for whom that truth has become eclipsed. To preserve tradition and at the same time defend those others condemn is the difficult, necessary task of religious leadership in an unreligious age.

[1] An English translation and commentary is contained in Abraham S. Halkin, and David Hartman. Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985.

[2] Shabbat 97a.

[3] Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 1: 6.

]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/elijah-and-the-still-small-voice/feed/0We Are Family: Parshat Pinchashttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/harrys-video-blog/we-are-family-parshat-pinchas/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/harrys-video-blog/we-are-family-parshat-pinchas/#commentsWed, 08 Jul 2015 20:15:13 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25571In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Pinchas, Pinchas’ act of zealotry in Numbers chapter 25 earns him the priesthood. But it also casts new light on a prior scene involving his tribe of Levi and the tribe of Shimon back in Genesis chapter 34.
]]>https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/harrys-video-blog/we-are-family-parshat-pinchas/feed/0Pinchas 5775https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/pinchas-5775-2/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/pinchas-5775-2/#commentsWed, 08 Jul 2015 04:24:21 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25509https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-rosner-on-parsha/pinchas-5775-2/feed/0Pinchas 5775https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-immanuel-bernstein-on-parsha/pinchas-5775/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-immanuel-bernstein-on-parsha/pinchas-5775/#commentsTue, 07 Jul 2015 15:04:03 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25426https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-immanuel-bernstein-on-parsha/pinchas-5775/feed/0Moshe’s Mantlehttps://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/moshes-mantle/
https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-ari-kahn-on-parsha/moshes-mantle/#commentsMon, 06 Jul 2015 15:39:51 +0000https://www.ou.org/torah/?post_type=parsha&p=25409As the Israelites move closer to entering the Land of Israel, issues of inheritance come to the fore. This is true regarding the Land itself, on the one hand, but also in terms of leadership on the other hand. Moshe, who will not enter the Land of Israel, raises the question: Who will be the new leader? Moshe insists that the People of God not be left leaderless: “Let God’s community not be like sheep that have no shepherd.’” (B’midbar 27:17)

From the manner in which the request is made[1], and from God’s response, it seems that this is not simply a political or military appointment.The person God chooses will have the unenviable task of filling Moshe’s shoes.

Replacing a legend in any industry is difficult; replacing Moshe seems impossible.In fact, a similar challenge is recorded in the Book of Kings, as the great prophet Eliyahu (Elijah) prepares to leave his student and heir Elisha. The master offers his anxious student one final blessing or wish:

And it came to pass, when they had crossed over (the Jordan), Eliyahu said to Elisha, ‘Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken away from you.’ And Elisha said, ‘I beg you, let a double portion of your spirit be upon me.’(2 Kings 2:9)

In what might at first seem to be a haughty or presumptuous request, Elisha asks not for the power of his master,but for double the power, twice the capabilities of the great Eliyahu. In fact, Elisha was far from haughty or power-hungry. He was fully aware of the greatness of his teacher, of Eliyahu’s unsurpassed gifts as a prophet and leader. If anything, Elisha felt inadequate to step into the enormous void that Eliyahu would leave behind, which led him to seek out some way to compensate for the shortfall in leadership and vision he foresaw. In Elisha’s mind, only an endowment of twice the power, twice the insight and vision, would be enough to compensate for his own lack of talent. Only in this way would he, who paled in comparison to his great teacher, be able to meet the challenge and fulfill the needs of the soon-to-be-bereft generation.

In contrast, when God answers Moshe’s plea for a replacement, God instructs him to take “take Yehoshua son of Nun, a man of spirit,…and invest him with some of your splendor so that the entire Israelite community will obey him.” (B’midbar 27:18,20)

Why should Elisha, the man chosen to replace Eliyahu, receive “twice the power” of his predecessor, while Yehoshua, the man chosen to replace Moshe, receive only “some of the splendor” of Moshe? To be sure, Moshe’s prophetic ability was unique. No other human being before or since will ever achieve that proximity to God.[2] Therefore, by definition, Yehoshua could not have been given “twice the power” of his teacher. But this does not explain why his mandate was so curiously limited from the outset.

We may say that this conundrum goes beyond the question of succession, and sheds light on the underlying issue that created the need for a change in leadership in the first place: Moshe could not enter the Land of Israel because, simply put, he was too great. The people could not completely understand or properly estimate Moshe’s capabilities. Instead, his unique relationship with God became a crutch that they had come to rely upon too heavily. Had Moshe continued to lead them into the Land of Israel, they would have remained passive, simply standing by and waiting for miracles to solve their problems and fulfill their needs. They would have become spectators rather than participants in Jewish history.

When God gives His commentary on Moshe’s death, He explains that Moshe was “guilty” of using too much of the power God had bestowed upon him.[3] By striking the rock, Moshe and Aharon gave the impression that they, and not God, were the source of this miracle. At this point in their development, the people had to be weaned from their reliance on miracles, from their expectation that miraculous events were the norm. The supernatural seemed natural to them.Now, their impending entrance into the Land of Israel would require them to shift into a different mode of existence: The manna would soon be replaced by agriculture, and their sustenance would no longer be insured through the agency of Moshe, Aharon and Miriam.Rather than waiting for their leaders to perform miracles, the people would now become partners with God.

Eliyahu and Elisha lived in a time of religious anarchy. The people were deeply involved in idolatrous worship, and the novice Elisha would have to seamlessly take up the mantle of leadership once worn by Eliyahu. Elisha was well aware of what lay ahead, and he wisely asked to be endowed with even more power than his teacher: The Jewish People needed to see the power of God; anything less would have fallen short of what would be necessary to stem the tide of paganism that had washed over the nation.On the other hand, Moshe’s generation had witnessed unparalleled miracles each and every day. They had no need for one more miracle. What they needed was to begin a new chapter, in which their own relationship with God would blossom and grow through the continuous acts of faith and adherence that would make up their everyday life in the Land of Israel. Moshe’s unique, miraculous form of leadership was what they had needed in the wilderness; the next chapter would be written in a different style, under the leadership of a man who was endowed with a small portion of Moshe’s spiritual capabilities – but with the capabilities most suited to the life that lay ahead of them in the Promised Land.